The Upside of Messy Surroundings: Cueing Divergent Thinking

ASSOCIATION FOR CONSUMER RESEARCH

Labovitz School of Business & Economics, University of Minnesota Duluth, 11 E. Superior Street, Suite 210, Duluth, MN 55802

The Upside of Messy Surroundings: Cueing Divergent Thinking, Problem Solving, and Increasing Creativity Kathleen Vohs, University of Minnesota, USA Aparna Labroo, Northwestern University, USA Ravi Dhar, Yale University, USA

Three studies show that messy surroundings enhance creativity on tasks associated with all three aspects of creativity: divergent thinking, convergent thinking, and problem solving. Moving beyond other work, we systematically control for potential competing explanations and test the effects across a wide range of tasks and participants.

[to cite]: Kathleen Vohs, Aparna Labroo, and Ravi Dhar (2016) ,"The Upside of Messy Surroundings: Cueing Divergent Thinking, Problem Solving, and Increasing Creativity ", in NA - Advances in Consumer Research Volume 44, eds. Page Moreau and Stefano Puntoni, Duluth, MN : Association for Consumer Research, Pages: 264-268.

[url]: http://www.acrwebsite.org/volumes/1021558/volumes/v44/NA-44

[copyright notice]: This work is copyrighted by The Association for Consumer Research. For permission to copy or use this work in whole or in part, please contact the Copyright Clearance Center at http://www.copyright.com/. Researching Outside the Box: The Cognitive and Motivational Processes of Creativity Chair: Melanie S. Brucks, Stanford University, USA

Paper #1: The Upside of Messy Surroundings: Cueing Divergent Hofstetter et al. examine how seeing the ideas of others in innova- Thinking, Problem Solving, and Increasing Creativity tion contests influences creative performance. Across four studies, Kathleen D. Vohs, University of Minnesota, USA including a field study using an actual open innovation platform, they Aparna A. Labroo, Northwestern University, USA demonstrate that seeing prior ideas from other users can facilitate Ravi Dhar, Yale University, USA creative performance or hamper creative performance, identifying competition salience as a key moderator. Paper #2: The Creative Power of Color Harmony Nara Youn, Hongik University, Korea Together, the four papers in the session enhance our understand- Changyeop Shin, Hongik University, Korea ing of when and why consumers are creative by capturing creativity Angela Y. Lee, Northwestern University, USA in a variety of ways in the lab and in the field: from classic creativity paradigms (e.g., the remote association task, drawings, and in- Paper #3: The Pursuit of Creativity in Idea Generation Contests sight problems) and perceptions of innovativeness to performance Melanie S. Brucks, Stanford University, USA in open innovation contests. Collectively, these papers draw from a Szu-chi Huang, Stanford University, USA wide spectrum of literature including construal level theory, mimic- Paper #4: Creativity in Open Innovation Contests: How Seeing ry, goal-setting, self-efficacy, and competition to provide insight into Others’ Ideas Can Harm or Help Your Creative Performance the motivational and cognitive processes of creative thinking. By ap- Reto Hofstetter, University of Lugano, Switzerland proaching creativity from different angles, methods, and literatures, Darren W. Dahl, University of British Columbia, Canada we believe that this session will attract a broad audience, facilitate Suleiman Aryobsei, University of St. Gallen, Switzerland interesting discussions, and cultivate collaborations on topics related Andreas Herrmann, University of St. Gallen, Switzerland to consumer creativity.

SESSION OVERVIEW The Upside of Messy Surroundings: Cueing Divergent Consumers regularly engage in creative thinking. For instance, Thinking, Problem Solving, and Increasing Creativity consumers come up with unconventional ways to use existing pos- sessions (Burroughs and Mick 2004), seek out purchases that enable EXTENDED ABSTRACT creativity (Dahl and Moreau 2007), and play an active role in cus- Society frowns upon mess. Mess is presumed to reflect low tomizing new products (Moreau and Herd 2010). In addition, com- productivity, income, education, and intellect (Abrahamson & Fried- panies have recently been turning to consumers for creative insight, man, 2007). Messy people are stereotyped as uncivil, children are harnessing their creative ideas through online crowdsourcing plat- admonished for messiness, workplaces often mandate orderliness, forms (Terwiesch and Xu 2008). Yet, in contrast to the importance and religions assert that cleanliness and orderliness are next to godli- and ubiquity of creative thinking in consumption, little research has ness (Abrahamson & Friedman, 2007). In this research, however, we investigated the mechanism of creative thinking. Specifically, what argue for the upside of mess and propose that messy surroundings are the key motivational and cognitive processes underlying creativ- cue creative thinking. ity? There are reasons to believe that messiness and creativity are The aim of this session is to contribute to this dialogue of what associated. Everyday language reflects a deep-rooted connection be- makes consumers creative and bring attention to this relatively un- tween mess and creativity. Creativity is associated with “outside the derexplored topic that both consumers and companies value. We box” thinking (Leung et al., 2012), and considered literally, putting will begin with contextual elements of creativity—surroundings and away things in a box organizes surroundings. Creativity is linked to color—and examine how these factors influence creative cognition. wild imagination, and wild is is ambiguous, unpredictable, and flex- Then, we will shift our focus onto the motivational processes of ible. So is mess. creativity in the context of idea generation contests, examining the A recent paper by Vohs, Redden, & Rahinel (2013) showed effect of goal-setting and social comparison (i.e., observing others’ — in one study with a fairly small sample for today’s requirements ideas) on creative performance. — that disorderly surroundings can make people break away from First, Vohs, Labroo, and Dhar examine how environmental cues convention and increase novelty-related thoughts. Building on these can influence creativity though environmental mimicry. In three ex- findings, we posit messy environments cue all sorts of creative think- periments, they demonstrate that a messy room enhances three as- ing. We tested our premise in three experiments. pects of creative cognition: problem solving, divergent thinking, and Experiment 1 employed a 2 (room: messy vs. orderly) between- convergent thinking. In the second paper, Youn, Shin, and Lee find subjects design. Fifty-one students participated. Depending on con- that another environmental factor, color harmony, can impact not dition, participants were placed in an area with neatly-ordered pa- only creative production, but also the perception of creativity. Across pers or disordered paper. Participants were provided with a puzzle six studies, they demonstrate that disharmonious color combina- allegedly being tested by marketers. This puzzle is comprised of two tions induce processing disfluency, which activates abstract thinking, loops that are linked and needed to be unlinked. The best solution is leading to improved performance on creativity tasks and intensified to twist the links in disparate ways. Participants were timed complet- perceptions of innovativeness in product and logo evaluations. In ing the puzzle. A one-way ANOVA revealed the expected effect of the third paper, Brucks and Huang demonstrate that the pursuit of condition, F(1, 37) = 4.44, p < .05. As predicted, participants were creativity in idea generation competitions could be counterproduc- quicker to solve the puzzle when seated in messy (M = .93 minutes) tive. Through three studies, they show that pursuing the goal to be rather than orderly surroundings (M = 2.22 minutes). creative reduces the number of creative ideas generated because the Experiment 2: A limitation of experiment 1 is that the task is not goal-directed monitoring process inhibits divergent thinking. Lastly, one conventionally used in creativity research. Moreover, this exper-

Advances in Consumer Research 264 Volume 44, ©2016 Advances in Consumer Research (Volume 44) / 265 iment did not include a cleared (empty) room condition. It is possible The Creative Power of Color Harmony that a cleared room encourages creativity just as much as a messy room. Accordingly, experiment 2 made two changes: we employed a EXTENDED ABSTRACT standard test of creativity, and we included a cleared room condition While prior research focuses on the influence of color on which we expected would be similar to the orderly room condition. creativity via the symbolic meaning that each color conveys (i.e., Experiment 2 employed a 3 (room: cleared vs. messy vs. or- growth for green, and openness for blue; Lichtenfeld et al., 2012; derly) between-subjects design in which performance on the RAT Mehta & Zhu, 2009), the current research explores how color may served as the key dependent variable of interest. The cleared and influence creativity via an abstract thinking style that certain color orderly room conditions were expected to serve as conceptual repli- combinations may evoke. We posit that exposure to moderately dis- cates. Seventy-three students, native English speakers, participated. harmonious (vs. harmonious or disharmonious) color combinations As in experiment 1, participants in the messy or orderly room condi- will result in a disfluent experience that induces abstract thinking tions were seated individually in a workspace comprised of disor- (Alter & Oppenheimer, 2008, 2009; Mehta et al., 2012), leading to dered or orderly papers and folders, respectively. In the cleared room enhanced cognitive flexibility and creativity (Förster et al., 2004; condition, the area was clear. Mehta et al., 2012). We defined harmonious, moderately disharmoni- Their task involved reading word-triads and listing a fourth ous, and disharmonious color combination of any chosen colors us- word that connected to each word in the triad. For example, “body” ing Moon and Spencer’s (1944) theory of color harmony as applied is the solution to the triad, “soul, busy, and guard.” Correct responses to Munsell’s (1919) color system. to each of the eight remote associates were tabulated into a creativ- The results of six studies provided support for our moderate ity-index. disharmony hypothesis. In the first study, we compared moderately The results showed that, as expected, participants in the messy disharmonious color combinations with “proven” creative colors and room performed significantly better relative to those in the cleared showed that instructions printed on green or blue background color (M = .32), t(39) = 2.08, p < .05, or orderly room (M = .47), t(49) induce greater creativity in terms of generating ideas to protect the = 1.89, p = .05. In sum, participants in the messy room were more environment than red or gray, replicating prior research; but more creative. Ancillary analyses (not reported due to word constraints) importantly, moderately disharmonious combinations of blue and showed that distraction or distress were not issues that accounted green lead to greater creativity than the single colors of blue and for the results. green. Experiment 3 employed a 3 (room: cleared vs. messy vs. or- Study 2 replicated the moderate color disharmony effect on derly) between-subjects design testing creativity of spontaneous insight problem solving as well as on the Remote Associates Test drawings. Sixty undergraduate students participated. Participants (RAT) designed to access creative performance. The results showed were randomly assigned to a clear, messy, or orderly condition. Par- that participants’ processing disfluency experience and their level of ticipants drew, on paper, whatever spontaneously came to mind. We construal (BIF; Vallacher & Wegner, 1987) mediated the effect of adapted Amabile’s (1982) method of judging creativity, which was color harmony on creativity. defined as “anything unexpected that produces effective surprise in In Study 3, we presented participants with a picture of an office, the observer.” Pictures were coded by two independent judges (1 = the walls of which were painted different colors, and asked them to not at all, 5 = very), which were correlated, r = .68, p < .01, and aver- imagine working in that office. Participants generated more creative aged. An ANOVA revealed the expected effect of surroundings,F (2, ideas and perceived the company to be more innovative when situ- 57) = 13.17, p < .01. As expected, pictures by participants in messy ated in an office with moderately disharmonious (vs. harmonious or room (M = 3.63) were significantly more creative than those in clean disharmonious) colors. Disfluency and abstract thinking again were (M = 2.17) or orderly rooms (M = 2.29), which did not differ. shown to mediate the color harmony effect on creative idea genera- General Discussion. People are hardwired to respond to envi- tion and perception of company innovativeness. ronmental cues. Three studies found that messy surroundings result- Study 4 demonstrated the robustness of the color harmony ef- ed in more disparate and disorderly ideas, which increased creativity fect in the context of a company logo. Participants judged the com- in a convergent creativity task, a puzzle, and picture drawing task. pany with the moderate disharmonious (vs. harmonious and achro- The effects were observed independent of mood or attention to task. matic) color logo to be more innovative, and considered the logo to They were also not a function of chronic messiness, but resulted be more appropriate for an entertainment company; whereas they from experiencing situational mess. considered the company with the harmonious color logo to be more While people non-consciously mimic others in their social en- reliable and the logo was more appropriate for a bank. vironments (Tanner et al., 2008), people also seem to mirror their Study 5 and 6 replicated the color harmony effect on product environments in non-social situations, perhaps to better understand evaluation using the contexts of a computer mouse (Study 5) and and navigate those environments. Thus messy surroundings, which a digital camera (Study 6). Further, the results of Study 6 showed are unpredictable, increase fresh creative thinking. that the color harmony effect carried over to actual behavior—those An interesting question is why people in messy surroundings presented with a moderately disharmonious (vs. harmonious and dis- assimilate thinking towards rather than away from creative cues. Ex- harmonious) color design of a camera were more likely to sign up tremely messy surroundings may create sensory overload and shut to receive a catalog that provides more information on the camera. down thinking altogether, resulting in rejection of a contrast away Taken together, these findings provide convergent evidence for from creative thinking. Future research should investigate these is- a color harmony effect on creativity. People exposed to moderate sues systematically. disharmonious color combinations were more creative; they also perceived environments (e.g., office) and targets (e.g., computer mouse, camera) with moderate disharmonious color designs to be more innovative. This effect is shown to be mediated by their processing disfluency experience that in turn activates an abstract, high level of construal. 266 / Researching Outside the Box: The Cognitive and Motivational Processes of Creativity The Pursuit of Creativity in Idea Generation Contests Semegon, and Schwarzer 2006) embedded in filler scales and then competed in an idea generation contest to come up with names for EXTENDED ABSTRACT a new Weather App. Replicating Study 1, we found that participants Technological advances in the past ten years have provided pursuing the goal to be creative came up with significantly fewer easy access to consumer creative insight through online crowdsourc- novel (M=6.26) and creative (M=3.11) ideas relative to the quantity ing. Platforms are sprouting all over the Internet enabling companies condition (Ms=7.91 and 3.82, respectively, ps<.001). Importantly, to create contests to solicit creative ideas from consumers. For ex- this effect was moderated by trait attentional regulation (b = .08, z ample, Lay’s recently held a “do us a flavor” contest, promising a = 1.80, p = .07), such that the counterproductive effect of setting a $1,000,000 reward to the consumer with the most creative idea for a creativity goal was significant among high attention regulators (trait new chip flavor. The present research explores how pursuing a goal regulation scores of 3 or above on 5-point scale), but not among low to be creative influences the creativity of the ideas generated in these attention regulators. contests. We posit that the monitoring process hinders divergent thinking Specifically, we propose that the pursuit of creativity canbe by narrowing attention to judge/block ideas using a specific and high counterproductive, leading to fewer creative ideas. We motivate our standard of creativity. Study 3 directly manipulated the standard set argument by drawing upon the literature of goal pursuit and early by the goal of the contest to examine this mechanism. 400 partici- creative cognition. When consumers start generating new ideas, they pants competed in a competition to come up with non-food related engage in divergent thinking, wherein one must leverage the weak uses for peanut butter and were randomly assigned to a creativity ties in memory and combine this retrieved knowledge into novel goal (specific and high standard), a quantity goal (no specific stan- ideas (Mednick 1962; Burroughs, Moreau, and Mick 2015). Impor- dard for the quality of ideas generated), a childish goal (specific but tantly, this means that divergent thinking is effortful and thrives on achievable standard: come up with as many CHILDISH non-food unfocused search, which can be inhibited by narrow thinking and related uses for peanut butter) or a baseline condition without any judgment. Given that divergent thinking is effortful and that goal goal. All goal conditions performed better than the baseline, repli- pursuit enhances motivation, compared to having no goal at all, pur- cating past work that having a goal increases creativity relative to suing a goal to be creative should enhance creative performance, as none at all. In addition, as in the previous two studies, participants previous literature has shown (Shalley 1995). However, goal pursuit pursuing a creativity goal came up with fewer novel (M=3.25) and also engages a monitoring process that focuses attention on goal- creative ideas (M=0.71) relative to the quantity condition (4.2 and directed behaviors and compares them to the standard set by the 0.95 respectively, ps<.01); mediation analysis confirmed the driv- goal (Carver and Scheier 1982). We posit that this monitoring pro- ing role of standard clarity/specificity between these two conditions, cess hinders divergent thinking by narrowing attention and judging such that having a creativity (vs. quantity) goal was counterproduc- (blocking) early ideas against a specific and high standard of cre- tive because it set a specific standard. Importantly, participants pur- ativity. Thus, taking both effort and monitoring into consideration, suing a childish goal also performed significantly better (Ms=4.78, we predict that in highly motivating contexts like idea generation .97 respectively, ps<.01) than participants with a creativity goal; competitions, introducing a specific and high standard to “be cre- mediation analysis confirmed the driving role of standard - achiev ative” will counterproductively reduce the number of creative ideas ability between these two conditions, such that having a creativity generated. (vs. childish) goal was counterproductive because it set a standard We conducted three studies to examine the effect of pursuing that was low in perceived achievability. creativity on creative performance as well as the underlying mecha- These findings show that pursing the goal the be creative can nism. In Study 1, 152 participants competed in an idea generation be counterproductive due to a goal-driven monitoring process that contest to come up with alternative uses for a sunglasses case. Par- narrows attention and compares ideas to a specific and high standard ticipants were randomly assigned to set either a creativity goal (i.e., of creativity. Our findings connect the literature of goal pursuit with “to win this competition, your task is to list as many CREATIVE creative cognition and have important implications for theories on uses for a sunglasses case as possible”) or a quantity goal serving as creativity, divergent thinking, goal-setting, and monitoring, as well the control group (i.e., “to win this competition, your task is to list as marketing practices of idea generation contests and consumer cre- as MANY uses for a sunglasses case as possible”); the quantity goal ativity. was similarly motivating but did not set a specific standard for the quality of ideas one should generate. Creativity in Open Innovation Contests: How Seeing We followed procedures from prior literature on creativity Others’ Ideas Can Harm or Help Your Creative (Friedman and Förster 2001; Vohs, Redden, and Rahinel 2013) to Performance have two independent raters code and compute two dependent measures of creative performance—the number of ideas scoring above EXTENDED ABSTRACT a high threshold on novelty (high novelty count) and both function- Public open innovation contests are becoming an increasingly ality and novelty (high creativity count). Participants who had the popular way for firms to generate new ideas. In this research, we goal to be creative produced significantly fewer highly novel ideas investigate how seeing ideas of others (denoted as “prior ideas”) in (M=2.99 ideas) than participants with a quantity goal (M=3.55 ideas, an open innovation contest influences the creative performance of p<.01). individuals. We propose that the number of prior ideas an individual If setting a goal to be creative is counterproductive because it sees before generating his or her own ideas can both discourage and engages a monitoring process that narrows attention, our hypoth- stimulate creative performance and that competition salience (i.e., esized effect should be especially prevalent among people who are when individuals are highly aware of the fact that their ideas are high on trait attentional regulation (i.e., high ability to focus). In competing against other’s performance) drives these effects. Study 2, we replicated the effect in Study 1 with a different- con Specifically, we argue that seeing numerous prior ideas ina test and tested the moderating role of trait attentional regulation. 201 competition will discourage creative performance due to an increase participants first responded to an attentional regulation scale (Diehl, in the perceived difficulty of the task that in turn negatively impacts Advances in Consumer Research (Volume 44) / 267 the competence one feels in being able to generate original ideas ing predictions of prior research (Boudreau, Lacetera, and Lakhani (H1). Indeed, when the competitive aspects of an open innovation 2011; Dugosh et al. 2000; Nijstad and Stroebe 2006; Nijstad, Stroe- contest are made salient, the prior ideas one is exposed to will di- be, and Lodewijkx 2002) that increasing the number of prior ideas rectly influence the assessed difficulty in proposing original ideas, can both stimulate and hinder creative performance utilizing an ac- i.e. ideas that go beyond what has already been identified (Guilford tual open innovation platform, European-based Atizo.com. Utiliz- 1968). The salience of numerous prior ideas as competitors, rather ing different measures of creative performance, we find consistent than sources of information or inspiration, will heighten the chal- empirical evidence for a negative effect. Our second study varies lenge of separating one’s ideas from the pack. Previous research the salience of competition finding that this contextual difference on parallel search in innovation contests adds to this argument by moderates the identified negative effect, i.e., the competitive threat identifying that some ideas occur more frequently with some, the of prior ideas triggers their negative influence. However, when com- so-called “idea-hubs”, being frequently mentioned by different in- petition is less salient, the positive effect of prior ideas is shown to dividuals independently (Kornish and Ulrich 2011). Participants’ manifest. Mediation analyses reveals that an increase in perceived exposure to numerous prior ideas is likely to involve such idea hubs, task difficulty and a loss of felt competence underlie the negative which then interfere with the individuals’ idea generation process by effect (after controlling for objective winning chances), and cogni- discouraging the expression of ideas that are similar to already men- tive stimulation provided by prior ideas drives the positive effects tioned ideas. Similar to production blocking in group creativity tasks identified. In a third study, we buttress participants’ abilities by ex- (Diehl and Strobe 1987; 1991), seeing similar competing prior ideas plicitly having them recall a situation where they were successful in may inhibit individuals from verbalizing their ideas as they occur generating ideas and find that this approach mitigates the negative and distract their own thinking. Consequently, the task of generating effects of prior ideas on competence and results in a more creative original ideas becomes more difficult to participants exposed to an performance. Study four identifies the moderating influence of the increasing number of prior ideas. Competition salience triggers this nature of prior ideas (i.e., whether the prior ideas are unique in nature effect as it introduces the need to distinguish one’s ideas from the versus more redundant) on the negative effect. Here we find that the prior ones, in order for them to be perceived as original. Task dif- negative effect of exposure to prior ideas is mitigated when unique ficulty in turn influences individuals’ feelings of competence, which ideas are shown. have been found to be malleable and sensitive to task-related cues (Gist and Mitchell, 1992; Tierney and Farmer 2002). Harming felt REFERENCES competence thus reduces individuals’ willingness to expend effort Adams, Stacy (1963), “Towards an Understanding of Inequity,” The (Eccles and Wigfield 2002) and their inner passion to perform the Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 67 (5), 422-36. task (e.g., Deci and Ryan 1985; Ryan 1992), undermining their cre- Albarracín, Dolores, Harry M. Wallace, and Laura R. Glasman ative performance (Amabile 1998; Tierney and Farmer 2002). (2004), “Survival and Change in Judgments: A Model of In contrast, drawing inspiration from the cumulative innova- Activation and Comparison,” in Advances in Experimental tion paradigm (Nijstad et al. 2002; 2006; Scotchmer 1991) we also Social Psychology (Vol. 36), ed. Mark P. Zanna, San Diego: expect that viewing more prior ideas can better stimulate creative Academic Press, 251-315. performance and increase feelings of competence by making an Bazerman, Max H., George F. Loewenstein, and Sally Blount White individual’s memory more accessible to the creative process (H2). (1992), “Reversals of Preference in Allocation Decisions: Cognitive stimulation occurs from prior ideas because they activate Judging an Alternative versus Choosing among Alternatives,” concepts and topics that otherwise would not have been activated, Administrative Science Quarterly, 37 (June), 220–240. potentially leading to new ideas that contain or combine such acti- Belk, Russell W. (1984), “Three Scales to Measure Constructs vated elements in new ways. Nijstad, Stroebe, and Lodewijkx (2002) Related to Materialism: Reliability, Validity, and Relationships showed how example ideas stimulate the ideation process of indi- to Measures of Happiness,” in Advances in Consumer viduals by presenting a series of example ideas prior to participants’ Research, Vol. 11, ed. Thomas Kinnear, Provo, UT: own idea generation. This stimulation was shown to enable creative Association for Consumer Research, 291–97. performance as individuals built on the initial examples by leverag- Bizer, George Y., Jon A. Krosnick, Allyson L. Holbrook, S. ing them in their own creations. Dugosh et al. (2000) showed that Christian Wheeler, Derek D. Rucker, and Richard E. Petty, greater stimulation and creativity can be expected if more example (2004), “The Impact of Personality on Cognitive, Behavioral, ideas are shown. Competition salience, however, harms this positive and Affective Political Processes: The Effects of Need to effect, and we find that only when competition is less salient does Evaluate,” Journal of Personality, 72, 995-1027. the positive influence of more prior ideas proffer. We thus propose Botti, Simona and Sheena S. Iyengar (2006), “The Dark Side of that prior ideas can play a “dual role” in influencing creative perfor- Choice: When Choice Impairs Social Welfare,” Journal of mance. Public Policy and Marketing, 25, 24–38. From a managerial perspective, finding ways to reduce the Brenner, Lyle, Yuval Rottenstreich, and Sanjay Sood (1999), negative effects of prior ideas on creative performance is crucial to “Comparison, Grouping, and Preference,” Psychological ensure the success of open contests. We predict that the negative in- Science, 10 (May), 225–29. fluence of prior ideas can be mitigated when prior ideas are related Chaplin, Lan Nguyen and Deborah Roedder John (2007), “Growing in such a way that feelings of competence are not threatened, either Up in a Material World: Age Differences in Materialism in by validating an individual’s abilities before exposure or by showing Child and Adolescents,” Journal of Consumer Research, 34 more unique prior ideas that impose less constraints on the ideation (4), 480-93. process. Indeed, numbing the competitive influence of prior ideas Dehaene, Stanislas and Rokny Akhavein (1995), “Attention, can decrease their demotivating effect (Ryan and Deci 2000a), and Automaticity, and Levels of Representation in Number instead harness the creative benefits of viewing others’ proposals. Processing,” Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Our contribution to the literature is defined by the empirical Memory, and Cognition, 21 (2), 314-26. testing of our conceptualization. In a first study, we test the compet- 268 / Researching Outside the Box: The Cognitive and Motivational Processes of Creativity

Diester, Ilka and Andreas Nieder (2007), “Semantic Associations Jarvis, Blair and Richard E. Petty (1996), “The Need to Evaluate,” between Signs and Numerical Categories in the Prefrontal Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 70(1), 172-194. Cortex,” PLoS Biology, 5 (11), 2684-95. Mittal, Vikas, William T. Ross, and Patrick M. Baldasare (1998), Girelli, Luisa, Daniela Lucangeli, and Brian Butterworth (2000), “The Asymmetric Impact of Negative and Positive Attribute- “The Development of Automaticity in Accessing Number Level Performance on Overall Satisfaction and Repurchase Magnitude,” Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 76 Intentions,” Journal of Marketing, 62 (January), 33-47. (2), 104-22. Nielsen (2009), “More than Half the Homes in U.S. Have Three Federico, Christopher M. (2004), “Predicting Attitude Extremity,” or More TV’s,” retrieved August 30, 2011, from http://blog. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 30, 1281-1294. nielsen.com/nielsenwire/media_entertainment/more-than-half- Fiske, Susan T. (1980), “Attention and Weight in Person Perception: the-homes-in-us-have-three-or-more-tvs/. The Impact of Negative and Extreme Behavior,” Journal of Nowlis, Stephen M. and Itamar Simonson (1997), “Attribute-Task Personality and Social Psychology, 38 (6), 889-906. Compatibility as a Determinant of Consumer Preference Fredrickson, Barbara L. and Christine Branigan (2005), “Positive Reversals,” Journal of Marketing Research, 34 (May), emotions broaden the scope of attention and thought-action 205–218. repertoires,” Cognition and Emotion, 19 (3), 313-32. Pratto, Felicia and Oliver John (1991), “Automatic Vigilance: The Hatfield, Elaine, G. William Walster, and Ellen Berscheid (1978), Attention-Grabbing Power of Negative Social Information,” Equity: Theory and Research, Boston, MA: Allyn and Bacon. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 61 Homans, George (1961), Social Behaviour: Its Elementary Forms, (September), 380-391. Oxford: Harcourt, Brace. Rubinsten, Orly, Avishai Henik, Andrea Berger, and Sharon Shahar- Hsee, Christopher (1996), “The Evaluability Hypothesis: An Shalev (2002), “The Development of Internal Representations Explanation for Preference Reversals between Joint and of Magnitude and Their Association with Arabic Numerals,” Separate Evaluations of Alternatives,” Organizational Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 81 (1), 74-92. Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 67 (3), 247-57. Schwartz, Barry (2004), The Paradox of Choice: Why More is Less. Hsee, Christopher (1998), “Less Is Better: When Low Value New York: Harper Collins. Options Are Valued More Highly Than High Value Options,” TIME (2006), “TIME Style and Design Poll,” retrieved Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, 11 (2), 107-21. August 30, 2011, from www.time.com/time/arts/ Hsee, Christopher K. and France Leclerc (1998), “Will Products article/0,8599,1169863,00.html. Look More Attractive When Presented Separately or Tzelgov, Joseph, Joachim Meyer, and Avishai Henik (1992), Together?” Journal of Consumer Research, 25 (2), 175–86. “Automatic and Intentional Processing of Numerical Hsee, Chrisopher, George Loewenstein, Sally Blount, and Max Information,” Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Bazerman (1999), “Preference Reversals between Joint and Memory, and Cognition, 18 (1), 166-79. Separate Evaluations of Options: A Review and Theoretical Van Boven, Leaf and Thomas Gilovich (2003), “To do or to have? Analysis,” Psychological Bulletin, 125 (5), 576-90. That is the question,” Journal of Personality and Social Hsee, Christopher, Yang Yang, Naihe Li, and Luxi Shen (2009), Psychology, 85, 1193-202. “Wealth, Warmth, and Well-Being: Whether Happiness Viswanathan, Madhubalan and Terry Childers (1996), “Processing Is Relative or Absolute Depends on Whether It Is About of Numerical and Verbal Product Information,” Journal of Money, Acquisition, or Consumption,” Journal of Marketing Consumer Psychology (4), 359-85. Research, 46 (3), 396-409. Weiner, Bernard (1995), Judgments of Responsibility: A Foundation Hsee, Christopher and Jiao Zhang (2010), “General Evaluability for a Theory of Social Conduct, New York: The Guilford Theory,” Perspectives on Psychological Science, 5 (4), 343- Press. 55. Isen, Alice M. (2008), “Some ways in which positive affect influences problem solving and decision making,” in Handbook of Emotions, eds. Michael Lewis, Jeannette M. Haviland-Jones, and Lisa Feldman Barrett, NY: Guilford, 548-73.